How To Get Your Cats To Like Each Other
- Make sure each cat has plenty of his or her own space. This means putting their food and water bowls, litter boxes, and beds in separate areas.
- Dont give the cats catnip. It can increase aggression in some cats.
- Have plenty of their favorite cat toys around to distract them from fighting.
- Make the time they spend together as pleasant as possible. Encourage fun activities, such as playing or giving each one a treat.
- If you have a big cardboard box, open both ends and put it on the floor for them to crawl and play in. It’s rare to find a cat that doesn’t have fun with cardboard boxes.
- Give each cat plenty of individual attention.
- Dont leave the cats alone together when you go out until you’re confident they’re not going to get into a serious fight.
- Have some Feliway on hand. Feliway is a product that replicates a pheromone that can calm cats during times of stress or fighting. It comes in both a spray and an electric diffuser. It can be purchased at most pet stores and online.
- If your cat are not spayed or neutered, they will be more prone to aggressive behavior. Unless you breed cats, consider having your pet neutered.
Preparing To Introduce A New Cat To Your Home
If Your Cats Still Cant Get Along
Dont hesitate to contact a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist or a board-certified veterinary behaviorist for guidance. One of these qualified experts can evaluate the problem and help you manage or resolve the conflict between your cats. To find a behaviorist in your area, please see our article, Finding Professional Behavior Help.
Some cats simply cannot live together peacefully. Since chronic stress and tension isnt healthy for people or pets, rather than force them to suffer years of stressful coexistence, it may be more humane to keep them permanently separated in the house or find another home for one of them.
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Rewind And Control Introductions
Sometimes bad habits are hard to break! For cats who have been not been getting along for a long time, it can be tough to change behaviors.
In this situation it often helps to go back to basics. Imagine you have just introduced your cats for the first time. Often one cat will tend to initiate conflict situations. So, start by moving the initiator cat to a safe space in the house, limiting them to this room, and follow steps to gradually and calmly introduce your cats to each other as though they were strangers.
It is wise to separate your cats if they are causing injury to each other, particularly if one or both cats are becoming ill due to stress, or if you start to see hiding and avoidance behavior.
Then, re-introduce your cats through controlled meetings. Visual-only introductions, placing barriers to prevent kitty aggression, and treats and encouragement for calm behavior can help them learn to get along.
Plan A: The First Step In Ensuring Your Cats Comfort Is By Providing Enough Resources To Go Around Thereby Eliminating The Need For Competition
- Place multiple feeding stations and litter boxes around
- the house.
- Provide both cats with adequate playtime. If your cats prefer to play separately, ensure they get individual playtime.
- Provide multiple cat trees and perches. The cat on the higher end of the totem pole is more likely to hog the loftiest spot. By providing more resting spots, youll help reduce the tension between them.
- Reward positive interactions of any kind between themfrom acknowledging each other to initiating friendly playby tossing treats and praising effusively. The more they associate positive experiences with each other, the less likely theyll be to turn on each other.
If your cats continue to be mortal enemies despite all the above efforts, dont beat yourself up. Cats, just like people, have preferences about the company they keep. Before you throw in the towel, there is one more thing you could try to get your cats like each other, outside of engaging a professional animal behaviourist.
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What Do You Do If Another Cat Is Fighting Yours
Sometimes, when your cat is wandering outside, they could be attacked by another cat. These attacks can be systematic: owners have stories of a single cat that keeps fighting their cat every time they go outside. This is especially worrying if your cat is mild-mannered and gentle, and is unlikely to fight back. The injuries from these fights can require several trips to the vet and can be worrying.
The best solution for how to stop cats from fighting in this situation is to keep your cat indoors. Letting them out after dark can be especially dangerous.
If you cannot keep your cat indoors, you can try and find out if the other cat belongs to someone and if that cat can be controlled. Alternately, when you hear your cat is in distress, go outside to help. Most strange cats will run at the sight of a human, so you may not have to do much to stop the fight except turn up.
Cats Need Mental Stimulation And Enrichment
Mental stimulation and enrichment are crucial for all of us.
Think about how you feel when you sit around and do nothing.
Now what if you did that every day for months?
Cat boredom and stress can manifest serious health issues.
Dress your home in the best cat enrichment supplies like:
These enrichment supplies will keep your cats busy and nurture their wild side.
For example, cats love to climb, scratch, perch, and hide. These are natural instincts that all cats have.
The enrichment supplies above satisfy all of these needs.
Tip: Remember, cats are territorial. Its best to have multiple enrichment areas to keep your cats happy.
A great way to help your cats get along is by providing each cat with his own enrichment area to call his own.
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Tips I Didnt Have To Implement That You May Want To
In terms of advice I can think of to make cats a lot more happy, a lot less anxious, and thus a lot less likely to get into fights with one another, here are a slew off the top of my head:
Make sure youre giving your cats enough attention. If one wants more, and the other doesnt seem to get jealous, give the cat that needs more attention what he or she needs. If both cats are getting what they need, what you give doesnt need to be equal. Theres only tension when a cat feels theyre lacking in something.
Make sure you have a tonne of places for cats to sleep, scratch, and use the litter. You do not want competition in these fields. Invest in small cat trees like the or cardboard cat scratchers like the Necoichi Cat-Headed Cardboard Cat Scratcher Bed, as these typically have scratch posts or pads and cat beds, two-in-one essentially, if you need more of both beds and scratch spots, but dont want to spend a lot .
If you know a few different things your cat likes specific spots to nap in, specific foods, treats, cuddles in sunny spots, scratching under his or her chin do it. As much as you can. Spoil that cat rotten! He or she will be so much better off in terms of anxiety levels for it.
Give your cats time. It takes ages to train cats to do something as simple as being comfortable to be driven around in a car, but you can train a cat to do that, and you can train a cat to be okay with another cat as well. Just dont assume its going to happen on your schedule.
Keeping The Peace Between Cats
To prevent future disputes, make sure each cat has her own cat bowl for food and water, play space, and cat litter box. Both doctors also recommend having an extra litter box, just in case.
Cats like to climb, McMillan says, so give each cat her own cat perch where she knows she can get away from the other if needed. The most comforting thing for any animal is to be able to seek out your own safe haven when things aren’t going well, he says.
Pheromone dispensers may also help relax anxious cats. Both doctors say theyve also seen positive results with nutraceuticals, though they recommend talking to your vet first. You want to make sure these products wont interact negatively with any medications your cat is prescribed. Your vet may also recommend anti-anxiety drugs to help preserve the peace.
Remember: some cats may never get along. But hopefully, you can get to the point where they at least tolerate each other. Living in peace is the goal, McMillan says. They may not like each other, but they can at least live together and not cause problems.
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What Do You Do If Your Cats Are Fighting
Watching your cats fighting can be heart-breaking here are two animals that you adore and they are hurting each other! While your first instinct might be to jump in and separate them, do be careful. Cats can be aggressive they are worked up like this, and you may get a lot of scratches for your efforts. We suggest trying to gently separate them, as long as you are sure you are not in harms way.
Distract them: Cats can get very engrossed with fighting, but you can try and distract them. Find something you know the love, like a toy, and make a noise with it. This might get their attention and stop the fight.
The most important thing to remember when stepping in to halt the fighting is: dont get hurt and dont make you cat more stressed/scared with the techniques used. So dont be aggressive towards your cat, and dont use heavy-handed techniques.
Introducing Your Cat To A New Cat
Free-ranging and feral cats lead complex and busy lives. They maintain far larger territories than most people realize, and these territories often contain a variety of environments, such as forests, farmlands, urban gardens and yards. Within these territories, cats explore, hunt and scavenge for food alone. They only occasionally interact with other cats. They dont live in groups or even pairs, and they dont seek out contact with other cats. In fact, they actively avoid it. Considering this natural behavior of cats, it isnt surprising that it can be very difficult to introduce a new cat into an established cats territory, even when that territory is your home.
If youre bringing a new cat into your home, be patient. The introduction must be gradual. Following the initial introduction, it can take a very long time for a relationship to grow. It takes most cats eight to 12 months to develop a friendship with a new cat. Although some cats certainly become close friends, others never do. Many cats who dont become buddies learn to avoid each other, but some cats fight when introduced and continue to do so until one of the cats must be re-homed.
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Give The Cats A Reason To Like Each Other
To change the mindset of cats who fear/mistrust each other, give them a reason to like each other. What does this mean for cats? Providing them with something they love when the other cat is around or when they see the other cat. Typically, this involves giving the cats food or a treat! Play time, as well as grooming , can also lead to positive associations. Its important to note that this is a process which may take a long time and requires consistency.
How To Stop A Cat Fight
When a cat fight starts, your first instinct may be to yell, clap, or break out the water gun. But this could just make things worse, Sackman warns.
Instead, you should take a deep calming breath and insert an object like a large piece of cardboard between the cats, McMillan suggests. This creates a gentle but impenetrable barrier between the two felines. If the cats are locked together, pick one up by the scruff, which will force him to release the other cat.
Keep the cats separated for a while to let them cool down. Every time you have a fight, the relationship gets worse, Sackman says. The longer the fights have been going on, the harder it is to correct the relationship.
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Do Cats Get Jealous Of New Babies
I would like to reassure parents that cats are NOT jealous of babies. While some of the behaviours displayed in response to the babys arrival can come across as jealousy, cats arent capable of the emotional feeling of jealousy. The uniqueness of a babys sound, smell and sight can be unnerving for a cat whos a creature of habit.
Care, I. C. . Module 5 Creating a cat friendly home, Part 3.3 Babies, Children and cats. Advanced Feline Behaviour for Vet Profesisonals. UK. Retrieved January 21, 2022
CatCare. . Cats & Babies. UK. Retrieved January 22, 2022
Society, T. H. . Bringing Home Baby for Cat Lovers. Canada: Toronto Humane Society. Retrieved January 24, 2022
Trevorrow, N. . Introducing cats to babies and children. UK: CP Clinic. Retrieved January 16, 2022
Yuschak, S. . Cats and kids: relationships arent born, theyre made. USA: International Society of Feline Medicine. Retrieved January 18, 2022
How Do I Reintroduce My Cats To Each Other
There will be times when your cats may need to be reintroduced to one another.
Reasons to reintroduce include inter-cat conflict and aggression, heightened agitation, a stress response to unknown stimuli, hospitalisation, illness, or home relocation.
In most cases, you will need to follow a similar process to the initial introduction phase.
In circumstances of a returning cat from hospitalisation, the cat coming home will need to be set up in a separate area with vital resources for at least 24 hours or even longer.
All the cats resources should be set up so he or she do not need to venture out. The other cat/s should not be allowed access to the returning cat. This period allows the confined cat to re-establish a familiar scent through self-grooming, owner stroking, scent swapping, and reintroductions through positive reinforcement with the aid of treats and toys.
This process requires a lot of patience and perseverance to help ensure both cats association can be rebuilt as positively as possible. If the fighting continues between each other after a gradual re-introduction phase, separate both cats and seek veterinary assistance.
Care, I. C. . Introducing an Adult Cat to your Cat. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from International Cat Care: https://icatcare.org/advice/introducing-an-adult-cat-to-your-cat/
Care, I. C. . Multi-cat households. Retrieved May 11, 2020, from International Cat Care: https://icatcare.org/advice/multi-cat-households/
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Problem : Bjorns Feisty Attitude Bothers Avery
Bjorns a pretty chill cat most of the time, but every so often, his inner wilder beast comes out and hes a maniac. Not quite like Jekyll and Hyde, hes more like Stitch after vs Experiment 626 before in the movie Lilo and Stitch. He sort of goes all weapon-of-mass-destruction around food, toys, and anything that gets him real excitable. And the way he walks is pretty quick, he hasnt got much of an understanding of personal space basically for a very low-key cat like Avery, Bjorn can be way too energetic, and maybe a little nuts.
Solutions: Trained Bjorn to be calmer around food fed two cats snacks together.
I started to train Avery and Bjorn to sit together, and this helped a lot with calming Bjorn down and showing Avery he could improve his feisty attitude. I detailed how I did that fully here, but basically that, in combination with the use of slow feeder toys, and honestly the introduction of the timed feeder , makes Avery a happy boy since he doesnt have to deal with a wildling version of Bjorn all that often anymore.
Have a cat who often gets hyperactive, and an aggressor cat who hates it? Figure out how easy it would be to calm the hyperactive kitty down, or separate the cats for playtime and/or feeding until theyve got a more healthy relationship between them.